This post is intended to provide you with an overview on what we are planning for Perpetuum during the remainder of this year. Before we venture into the realm of tl;rig (too long;read it goddammit), some general notes:

Our goal is to do smaller but significant updates, and a lot of them.

The list that you see here is in no particular order. We still have to prioritise it, and we also consider your feedback on what you would like to see first. UPDATE: We now have a poll for this.

The listed features and changes are in varying states of development. Some have a pretty solid concept that only needs to get done, but there are some where details are floating in the air. I’ll point these out individually and probably take them for a spin on the forums.

The list does not mean that we won’t do anything else if something more important comes up, nor that we won’t take any of these ideas back to the drawing board if some serious concerns arise. Your feedback is very welcome.

I’ll try to be as concise and to the point as possible because this is a long list. When we select to do a batch of these or make any progress, we’ll have detailed individual posts about them. If any particular feature or change catches your interest and would like to know more about, feel free to post a forum topic and I’ll try to answer it the best I currently can.

New features & significant reworks

NPC reworks

Static spawns will be replaced by free roaming spawns of roughly the same sizes everywhere

A few larger caravans will probably stay too, if they are not interfering too much

We will make good use of the random NPC system developed for assignments here

Alpha 2 and upwards will have red (aggressive) NPCs only

We are looking into the possibility of enemy NPC groups fighting each other on the islands

Loot rework

The current loot table system in unmaintainable

We are developing a new random loot system

This will also bring some significant loot balance changes, like drastically reducing the amount of “trash” items dropped, and a rebalance of kernels

Distress beacon rework

Distress beacons have caused a lot of headache for us which have resulted in the introduction of some pretty nasty mechanics

The new system would start with the introduction of “alien teleport anomalies”, which would periodically spawn and despawn in random locations on all islands

These anomalies would be visible objects (no scanning needed), and distress beacons (which would be repurposed into “teleport hijack beacons” basically) would need to be deployed and activated next to one of these. They wouldn’t work anywhere else.

Activating the beacon will spawn in the enemy NPCs just like now, and close the anomaly (so one beacon per anomaly)

Currently existing beacons can be used in the new system, you don’t lose anything

Multiple anomaly types that limit which beacon can be used, to be able to differentiate alpha/beta/gamma usage

Makes us able to remove the “no loot when NPC is destroyed by explosion” and “NPC teleport” mechanics

Artifacts rework

The current artifact scanning mechanic is not intuitive enough, a lot of players struggle with it

The new mechanic would be a bit similar to directional scanning

Instead of the artifact result list showing distances, it would instead show you realtime bearing indicators (the small compass thingies that we have in the landmarks list too)

These would lead you directly to the scanned coordinates, you only need to keep your compass straight while moving

The catch is that depending on your scanning efficiency and your distance from the artifact, the scanned coordinate might be somewhat off, so once you arrive at your result, you’ll probably have to do another scan, and repeat this process a few times

This mechanic will always have a certain amount of inaccuracy, to not make it too easy

You’ll probably be required to find the exact tile, being just near to it when scanning will not spawn the artifact like now

Field rescue

Losing robots once and for all is a bit too hardcore

We’d like to introduce a mechanic that would allow you to keep your robot when it’s destroyed

It would stay unusable, unless you repair it using either materials or NIC

The robot would keep track of the number of destructions, and each repair would be more expensive than the previous one, up to a point where it’s not worth to repair it anymore and scrap it for good

Basically “number of lives” for robots

Makes insurance obsolete

Industry concerns: given that this would probably make players take more risks and encourage PvP, ultimately the number of robots lost for good and consequently manufacturing demands should not change significantly

Details still need to be worked out, especially what would happen to modules

Syndicate supply drops

Big loot containers dropped in random but pre-announced times and locations

Probably beta islands only, to encourage PvP events

Loot will have a relatively large spread regarding value and volume too

Plot twist: you can only loot it while you’re not in combat

Possibly could work on Alphas too if the location is not preannounced, but instead putting a visible beacon on the location that can be seen from afar

Specimen processing SAP rework

Rework it so that it would require you to deliver items from the SAP to a randomly chosen item delivery point nearby (or the other way around), similar to transport assignments

Equipment in killmails

Include robot equipment in the killmail API

Log pagination fixes

Fix the pagination of various logs and stop the “click through endless empty pages because nothing happened” silliness

Item linking in chat

Be able to link items into chat for bragging rights or referencing

Closing

So this is it for now, our plans for this year - although some of them could seep into 2016 already, we’ll see. We hope there are many things in this list that make you excited for the future, we certainly look forward to them.

Again, feel free to open forum topics for any of the features or changes above, voice your concerns, make a suggestion, or simply express your approval - your feedback is important.

5 Blocker

6 DEV Zoom

7 FlufyDestroyer

You guys should use Trello. Put all your roadmap entries in trello and let people vote and comment on it. Its an awesome tool for developers to let people know what you guys are doing and let people vote and put comments on certain specific ideas.